yashsingh1/xdaforums huggingface dataset:
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] rprr:
EDIT: March 18th, 2012: See note at bottom regarding upgrade to Honeycomb with CWM installed.

Clockworkmod recovery for the Vizio VTAB1008

As promised here it is.

Use this carefully. Any wrong commands can potentially brick your system

I was able to port Clockwork Mod Recovery to the Vizio and boot into it.

Many thanks to fadefx for testing it.

The zip file is attached to this post. Please unzip and read the instructions in README.txt. It is also given below. Please also read the Caveats below.

CAVEATS:

Display is in landscape mode only

Cannot restore the kernel and ramdisk backups yet

No ROM manager support yet

Also the edifying scripting has some issues with the mount command. Any commands that begin with

should be replaced as in the following example

Original Recovery

WARNING IF YOU WANT TO UPGRADE to Honeycomb:

Some of us including me have had problems when we attempted to upgrade to Honeycomb with CWM installed. This has resulted in non working devices. It maybe due to CWM. If so, it is possible that you may have to revert back to the stock recovery. I am attaching it to this post. You have to unzip it, move it to the sdcard and then install it. Remember that root will be lost if you follow this.

dd if=/sdcard/recovery-orig.img of=/dev/block/mmcblk0p5 bs=512
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] FadeFx:
I don't think the bootloader is located on /sdcard/ this partition is fat formatted and the bootloader would be visible to the user in some way either through a filenrowser or when mounted to a windows machine.
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] rprr:
Thanks. Using the mmls tool from Ubuntu, I was able to dig up a little further to find unallocated partitions etc. Here is the list.
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] rprr:
So far, I have tried various hacks but just cannot get CWM to run on this :( However, if you are good with Linux/Unix command line stuff and with adb it is possible to make backups of the various partitions. Thus far, I have backed up and restored the recovery partition successfully. This is obviously a very dicey thing to do as it is possible to brick this device.
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] dylanparrish:
well is there any way we can just modify the existing recovery menu?

plus you did get adb to work with it but that was a simple fix
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] rprr:
In order to change the options you have to build the recovery program from the Android source code.
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] KJ5ES:
Good Morning! Just a quick note to say thanks for working on this! Keep going...I think you can, I think you can, I can think you can etc etc etc. hahaha:)
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] FadeFx:
Rprr, i think you have to specify the partition reckernel somewhere in board config as it seams the recovery has its own kernel there and it needs to know where it is located.

Edit: finally obtained root using a win7 64bit machine, pdanet drivers and d00ml0rd v3 and adb files from sdk.

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tapatalked
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] rprr:
Obsolete: Please see OP.

Still no luck with CWM port. Anyway, here is my method for enabling adb when in recovery. This requires linux/unix terminal line usage. On my VTAB the recovery partition is at /dev/block/mmcblk0p5. I assume that this is the case with all Vizio vtab1008 tablets.

Proceed carefully. You can potentially damage your device.

1. Quick Way

Download my recovery-new.img.zip file which is attached to this post and unzip it. You will have a file called "recovery-new.img". Copy this to your sdcard. Then open an adb shell and become root. Run the following command.

dd if=/sdcard/recovery-new.img of=/dev/block/mmcblk0p5 bs=512

Now reboot into recovery. You will have adb access.

2. Long Way for DIYers

On VTAB using adb as root:

dd if=/dev/block/mmcblk0p5 of=/sdcard/recovery.img bs=512

On my Mac (in terminal), Should work on linux as well:

adb pull /sdcard/recovery.img
cp recovery.img recovery.cpio.gz
gunzip -f recovery.cpio.gz
mkdir recovery
cd recovery
cpio -i -F ../recovery.cpio

Edit the 'default.prop' to make the needed changes. It should look like.

#
# ADDITIONAL_DEFAULT_PROPERTIES
#
ro.secure=0
ro.allow.mock.location=0
ro.debuggable=0
persist.service.adb.enable=1

On my Mac again:

cpio -i -t -F ../recovery.cpio | cpio -o -H newc -O ../recovery-new.cpio
cd ..
gzip recovery-new.cpio
dd if=/dev/zero of=recovery-new.img count=16384 bs=512
dd if=recovery-new.cpio.gz of=recovery-new.img conv=notrunc
adb push recovery-new.img /sdcard/recovery-new.img

On Vizio using adb as root:

dd if=/sdcard/recovery-new.img of=/dev/block/mmcblk0p5 bs=512

Now reboot VTAB into Recovery mode. You should have adb access.

PS: If you have made any mistakes, you can reflash the original recovery.

dd if=/sdcard/recovery-orig.img of=/dev/block/mmcblk0p5 bs=512

PPS: Once you have adb root shell access in recovery, you can backup and potentially restore the /system partition.

PPPS: I am also attaching the original recovery if you would like to flash it back using dd. It is called recovery-orig.img.zip. Please unzip it.
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] dylanparrish:
great tutorial i will give it a try, it would be nice if someone could do this and backup the system partition on a new vtab that way if something goes wrong you can reflash it

additional thoughts could this lead to rom porting as well http://android.modaco.com/topic/348695-guide-how-to-port-a-rom/
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] rprr:
Users cannot modify the system partition. Therefore the only difference between a new system partition and after rooting should be the root that were installed such as su, busybox etc.

PS: I assume that all Vizio tablets have the same partition structure with an 8MB recovery partition at /dev/block/mmcblk0p5.
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] FadeFx:
But after root one can modify /system and thus brick the device. If wed have a backup we can dd it back while in recovery mode.

Yes, since there is only one vizio tablet model, all have the same partition layout.

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tapatalked
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] rprr:
Obsolete. Please see OP.

HOWTO: Backup/Recovery of /system using command line tools.

Once you have adb working in recovery mode this is what you can do to backup and recover your /system partition.

### Backup Procedure ###

Boot into recovery mode.

adb shell

You will get the following error. Ignore it.

sh: getcwd: No such file or directory

Now do the following. Assumes internal sdcard at mmcblk0p4 and /system at mmcblk0p2

cd /
mount -o rw -t vfat /dev/block/mmcblk0p4 /sdcard
dd if=/dev/block/mmcblk0p2 of=/sdcard/system.img bs=4096

The system.img file contains a backup of the /system. In principle one can recover from this.

### Recovery Procedure ###

Reboot into recovery.

adb shell
cd /
mount -o rw -t vfat /dev/block/mmcblk0p4 /sdcard
dd if=/sdcard/system.img of=/dev/block/mmcblk0p2 bs=4096

Reboot into normal mode.

I have not yet had a need to do the recovery part yet so that has not been tested by me.

HTH.
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] FadeFx:
Linked in my howto thread...

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tapatalked
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] grekco:
I have not been able to get this to work. After booting into recovery my win7 sees the vtab as usb storage and not usb composite. I guess this is whats causing ADB to not see it as a device. Any suggestions?
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] rprr:
I have been using a Mac. I don't know what would be causing this issue on Windows. In my situation I need to restart adb.
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] sigeltek:
Good work as always rprr and fade... appreciate the time u guys are putting into this tab, i'm always checking the threads for updates.
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] abtxpress:
error: device not found.

My computer says its connect and ready but adb not recognizing it. Any ideal?
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] rprr:
Can you try "adb kill-server" followed by "adb start-server" before connecting the device? Then connect the device and do "adb devices".

Unfortunately I don't have easy access to a Windows machine.

Edit: I wonder if the Windows drivers required are different depending on whether one is accessing adb through recovery mode when compared to normal mode.
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] rprr:
Update on CWM: Still no luck with CWM porting.

But,

I decided to go back to the android stock source source code for 2.3.2 which is on the Vizio tablet. This time I was able to build the recovery binary and then copy it to the recovery partition. I was able to get this to run but the graphics is all distorted in the following way.

1) I see 4 exclamation symbols in landscape mode and 2 recovery menus (see pic)

2) It does not respond to the volume buttons + power button

I am guessing that there are frame buffer issues + input issues.
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] FadeFx:
Have you checked /system/use/keylayout/ to have the controls mapped to the right keys?

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tapatalked from vizio vtab1008
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] FadeFx:
Rprr, i was looking through system folder and came across /system/etc/security/ which contains a zip file otacerts.zip i guess it is only for the update server, but maybe worth a look. Possibly we can get something usefully through this...

Possibly the public key for update.zip files is also stored somewhere within the recovery partition or recsystem so we could just put an other public key and let update zips work through stock recovery.

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tapatalked from vizio vtab1008
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] rprr:
That zip file does seem to have a key in it called releasekey.x509.pem. I have no idea how one would go about using this.
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] dylanparrish:
http://www.londatiga.net/it/how-to-sign-apk-zip-files/

How to sign apk or zip files using SignApk.jar:

Download SignApk.rar from link given above

Extract it anywhere on your drive (eg. c:\SignApk)

If you don’t have java installed, download and install it.

Copy certificate.pem and key.pk8 into your extracted SignApk directory

Within SignApk directory type:

java -jar signapk.jar certificate.pem key.pk8 your-app.apk your-signed-app.apk

OR

java -jar signapk.jar certificate.pem key.pk8 your-update.zip your-signed-update.zip

try signing a update.zip with it?
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] FadeFx:
Hmm sounds like we definitely need the key.pk8 file as well.

But my idea was to swap this file with one we have the key.pk8 for.

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tapatalked from GalaxyS
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] rprr:
Thanks for the link. I will see what is needed.

BTW: Did you get your Vtab working again?
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] rprr:
Success with CWM

Please see the OP.
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] marvin02:
Once you get this where it can flash a zip users with the latest update may be able to root using this method. It uses the recovery to to flash superuser and busybox to the device. The thread I linked ot is for the Dell Streak, but the method should work on other devices. Or did you have to already have root to install CWM? The Streak has a fastboot n=mode that allows flashing of system files without root.

I know that on the Streak there is a script that runs at boot that over writes any custom recovery installed. Does this happen on the VTAB? Can you boot into recovery repeatedly?

Thanks for your work.
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] FadeFx:
Rprr, is cwm now fully working, Or has it still some bugs?

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tapatalked from GalaxyS
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] sigeltek:
nice, good work!
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] nb45cl:
Using the "quick way," nothing happens. Rooted Vizio. I go to ADB, SU mode. Then when I pass in the command for the quiick way, it just hangs. Any ideas?
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] auburnham:
Is the file recovery-new.img in the root of your internal memory?
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] rprr:
I needed root access in order to flash the cwm recovery image. But once it is flashed you can reboot into cwm repeatedly. The custom recovery does not get over written. I am not familiar with fastboot and not sure if the vtab allows it.
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] rprr:
As you can see the display of the cwm is in landscape mode. I have not figured out how to rotate it. All the keys work. I have not tested all the available options in cwm recovery only a few.
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] nb45cl:
Yes, I put it on the SDCard. Just to be sure something weird wasn't happening, I also put it on the "fake" Vizio SD Card. Neither place works. I just get the hang at the point I enter the command in ADB, SU mode. I've rebooted a bunch of times, both Windows and the Vizio. It still just hangs.
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] rprr:
Can you do the following when booted normally and send me the output of what you see?

From your dos command line do 'adb shell'

Inside adb do

su

cd sdcard

ls -l recovery-new.img

which dd
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] nb45cl:
Well, I switched to a Mac, installed ADB, and did it from there. It did do the copy this time. But ADB from recovery isn't working after reboot.

So I put it back on my Windows machine. I had it plugged into a USB3 port. I switched to USB2. Did the command again. It worked this time. I sent a reboot command from ADB. During reboot, I went into recovery. ADB isn't working.

I unplugged it from USB and back in just to be sure. I get the USB connected sound. Still doesn't work.

So it looks like this didn't really do anything.
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] rprr:
I use a Mac and adb works perfectly both in normal mode and recovery as well.

I have also used it on a Windows 7 starter edition 32 bit system. I had some troubles but got it going eventually. See my Post #34 in that thread.
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] dylanparrish:
i have not gotten it working but if we can figure out how to flash im thinking i can just reflash the system partition or get adb to work and manually "flash" it on. vizio said the will send me a new one how ever i do not want one with the latest update

and congrats on getting cwm to work
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] nb45cl:
So I next have done it the long way. The changes defined in the long way were already there when I did the pull. I went ahead and rebuilt, pushed it and reloaded. It still doesn't have an effect.

This is a new Vizio. Could they have changed something over the last month or so? I tend to doubt it. But it's definitely not working. And the changes specified are in fact in there and on the device.
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] rprr:
I am attaching it here and also to this post here where I explain how to do it.
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] rprr:
I am assuming that you still can't adb in recovery mode even after modifying with my recovery-new.img? It should work. I was able to get it working on my Windows 7 32 bit starter edition netbook after a little bit of trouble. I needed to somehow get the Vizio drivers installed but once that was done all worked well.
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] rprr:
Some help needed ...

I am trying to test out the behavior of cwm on the Vizio. However, this is my first and only Android device. Do any of you have other android devices with cwm recovery installed? If so is shell access enabled via adb. What happens when you do an 'adb shell' just after booting into cwm? Does that drop you into an adb root shell?

On the Vizio with cwm recovery booted, I get an error when I try to do 'adb shell' even though adb access is enabled. However, after mounting the /system partition from cwm and modifying the init.rc I can start up 'adb shell'. That to me is not an ideal behavior in case you have corrupted the system partition.

On the vizio, with the modified default recovery (adb enabled) I can get into an 'adb shell'.

I am continuing to investigate this which appears to be related to some busybox issues. Any help will be most appreciated. Thanks in advance.

EDIT: ISSUE is fixed.

SOLUTION: The variable called SHELL_COMMAND in system/core/adb/services.c needs to be changed. All good now.
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] FadeFx:
I think you got to do adb root, but i cant test atm as i am at work.

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tapatalked from GalaxyS
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] rprr:
Thanks. I tried your suggestion of adb root but that is not the issue.

$ adb shell
- exec '/system/bin/sh' failed: No such file or directory (2) -

This is what I get. Somehow the 'SHELL' variable seems to be hardcoded to /system/bin/sh. I saw it within busybox and I tried to change but it was no go. I will try to check again.

EDIT: Issue is fixed now. All good.
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] KJ5ES:
CWM = TAL (Thanks A Lot)

Thanks A Lot for getting CWM working!
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] cleanmydirt:
cw

Thanks so much...been waiting for this. Ive rooted changed font bootanimation,supercharged v6 ..all without a recovery ill end up bricken wo a backup soon. Is cw ready to be used?

i hate lockscreen,notifcations and changin wallpaper. So once cw is installed ill be customizin thevizeo more..thanks again
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] FadeFx:
Rprr, can you provide the recovery image to install using dd? I'd like to test it. I have expirience in using cwm for some years already ;-)

If you don't want to publish yet, you can send me a pm...

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tapatalked from vizio vtab1008
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] rprr:
Thanks for volunteering :) I have sent you a PM.
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] rprr:
Very soon. In the next few days. Still testing it.
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] dtr145r:
woot!!! thanks a bunch sir.

ive been waiting for someone to get cwm ported! :)
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] rprr:
CWM for Vizio VTAB1008.

I have updated the OP.
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] Maine_Coon:
Excellent, excellent job.

Works fine for me.

I made Nandroid backup right away.
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] FadeFx:
Btw, i installed this from my device without using adb through android terminal emulator...

@rprr: it would be cool if you could change the thread title to show progress eg: [CWM RECOVERY]vTab1008 - initial release 11-12-11 or something like this.

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tapatalked from vizio vtab1008
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] rprr:
I did not even think about using terminal emulator. That is another good way especially if you don't have a computer with adb access readily available.

PS: I also modified the thread title as suggested.
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] sigeltek:
nice work! Can't wait to try later.
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] Maine_Coon:
How did you change boot animation?

I replaced bootanimation.zip with my own in /system/media but it has no effect.

No live wallpaper either for me:confused:
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] cleanmydirt:
No live wallpaper yet,will work on it...I did try everything for a bootanimation and figured out how to do it. There is an easy way download an app called Rom Toolbox...Great App its free and a 4.99$ app. The free one offers many bootanimations and work no problem.. as far as manually I really can remember how on this tablet I have many diffrent toys and messing with all of em. I will be customizing the Vizio as I have with few other phones..Ill post something when I do...
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] FadeFx:
Tried installing a custom boot animation using romtoolbox, tried every available install location, but no dice, it always comes up with the stock vizio logo.

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tapatalked from GalaxyS
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] mlewis2388:
I was going to try this but haven't had the time yet. I'm assuming you are putting the file under "System/media/bootanimation.zip". Did you resize the images to meet the same size as the V symbol or the other file that's under the PART1 folder (sorry can't remember the actual numbers). When you replace the file does it show nothing or just simply not change anything? Has anyone tried naming the files the same (I know that shouldn't matter)?

"The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few"
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] FadeFx:
It does not change anything, i think the "bootanimation" is not located either in /system/media/ nor in /data/local/ as there is no bootanimation.zip in those locations by default. However, there is a bootanimation file in /system/bin/ but i have no idea on what exactly it does.

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tapatalked from GalaxyS
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] mlewis2388:
There is one in my system/media by default...

"The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few"
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] cleanmydirt:
Boot

The vizio is the splash image...I havent messed with that, The V still shows but after a boot animation will come...also http://uot.dakra.lt/how_to/...I have changed the window animations,battery icons,overscroll color,window colors..here is a couple crap pics...If i knew how to show video id send u my bootanimatin...The bootanimatin was in the system/bin/bootanimation
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] mlewis2388:
That's cool. The boot animation that I found had just the one simple V with multiple images of the same thing. I wasn't referring to the splash screen. I guess I can't tell the difference on this device because there is no variant between a stock boot animation and to splash screen.

Question about you making changes to the appearance of the system, how did you install the files? Did you push them through adb or swap them with Estrongs or Rootexplorer? There's still no way to flash zips right? Even with CWM. I haven't even messed with it yet so just wondering.
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] rprr:
The CWM does allow for zip flashing.
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] mlewis2388:
So I changed all the blue images to green in the framework-res.apk and found that the opening boot V is in there. I used estrongs to just drop it over the top of the old file because my zip failed to install through CWM. I'm sure it was the way I wrote the file but I don't know what I did wrong. /system is at /mmcblk0p12 correct? Any guidance would be appreciated. Bottom line, I've got a tablet that I can customize thanks to you guys. Thanks again for figuring out the hard stuff.
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] rprr:
System is at /dev/block/mmcblk0p2. Can you post or pm me the updater-script? Here is a simple updater-script.

#
#
show_progress(0.100000, 0);
show_progress(0.500000, 0);
ui_print(" Mounting SYSTEM ...");
run_program("/sbin/busybox", "mount", "/system");

ui_print(" Installing Files ...");
package_extract_dir("system", "/system");

ui_print(" Unmounting SYSTEM ...");
unmount("/system");
ui_print("");
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] FadeFx:
Try mounting system either in recovery mounts and storage prior to installing the zip file, or in the script through

run_program("/sbin/busybox","mount","/system");

There is a bug in the recovery that does not allow to mount the edify way...

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tapatalked from vizio vtab1008
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] mlewis2388:
Thanks for the info. Not sure what I did wrong then first time but it's all good now. I've got a good green theme going now.

"The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few"
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] cleanmydirt:
I uaed cw to flash...im workin on third theme...greem/orange theme ...red mixer based of cm7 theme i have some tweaks left bur ill post a flashable zip soon...
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] FadeFx:
I suggest to open a new thread for each theme, i will link them up in my thread, just drop me a pm with the link to the thread.

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tapatalked from GalaxyS